re of wind and wave, or of fish to his
laborious net, than the Brighton house-owner (bred in affluence she may
have been, and used to unremitting plenty) to the support of the casual
travellers who visit the city. On one day they come in shoals, it is
true, but where are they on the next? For many months my poor sister's
first floor was a desert, until occupied by your noble little boy, my
nephew and pupil. Clive is everything that a father's, an uncle's (who
loves him as a father), a pastor's, a teacher's affections could desire.
He is not one of those premature geniuses whose much-vaunted infantine
talents disappear along with adolescence; he is not, I frankly own, more
advanced in his classical and mathematical studies than some children
even younger than himself; but he has acquired the rudiments of health;
he has laid in a store of honesty and good-humour, which are not less
likely to advance him in life than mere science and language, than the
as in praesenti, or the pons asinorum.

"But I forget, in thinking of my dear little friend and pupil, the
subject of this letter--namely, the acquisition of the proprietary
chapel to which I have alluded, and the hopes, nay, certainty of a
fortune, if aught below is certain, which that acquisition holds
out. What is a curacy, but a synonym for starvation? If we accuse the
Eremites of old of wasting their lives in unprofitable wildernesses,
what shall we say to many a hermit of Protestant, and so-called
civilised times, who hides his head in a solitude in Yorkshire, and
buries his probably fine talents in a Lincolnshire fen? Have I genius?
Am I blessed with gifts of eloquence to thrill and soothe, to arouse
the sluggish, to terrify the sinful, to cheer and convince the timid, to
lead the blind groping in darkness, and to trample the audacious sceptic
in the dust? My own conscience, besides a hundred testimonials from
places of popular, most popular worship, from reverend prelates, from
distinguished clergy, tells me I have these gifts. A voice within me
cries, 'Go forth, Charles Honeyman, fight the good fight; wipe the tears
of the repentant sinner; sing of hope to the agonised criminal; whisper
courage, brother, courage, at the ghastly deathbed, and strike down
the infidel with the lance of evidence and the shield of reason!' In
a pecuniary point of view I am confident, nay, the calculations may
be established as irresistibly as an algebraic equation, that I can
realise, as